1.
Nikolay Krestinsky
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Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician. Like most Old Bolsheviks, he did not survive the Great Purge, Krestinsky was born in the town of Mogilev, in what is now Mahilyow Voblast of Belarus. According to Russian archivist A. B, roginsky, Krestinsky was of ethnic Russian origin. Other sources suggest ethnic Ukrainian origins, while according to Felix Chuev, Krestinsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903 and sided with its Bolshevik faction. After the February Revolution, which overthrew monarchy in Russia, he proved to be a capable organizer and was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party on 3 August 1917. He was made a member of the first Soviet Orgburo on 16 January 1919 and he was also made a member of the Central Committee Secretariat on 29 November 1919 and served as the partys Responsible Secretary for the next year and a half. In late 1920 to early 1921, after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, after Vladimir Lenins victory at the tenth party congress in March 1921, Krestinsky lost his Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat posts and became Soviet ambassador to Germany. The post was an important and sensitive one because of Soviet Russias crucial and delicate relationship with Germany at the time, Krestinsky supported Trotsky and the Left Opposition in 1923 – early 1927, but distanced himself from Trotsky later in 1927. He completely broke with the opposition in April 1928, Krestinsky continued working as a diplomat until 1937, when he was arrested during the Great Purges. He was put on trial on 12 March 1938, while almost all other defendants admitted their guilt during the Moscow Show Trials, Krestinsky at first denied everything, but reversed himself the following day. On 2 March he said to the judge, Vasili Ulrikh. I was never a member of the right-winger and Trotskyite bloc, nor have I committed a single one of the crimes imputed to me, personally, and in particular I am not guilty of having maintained relations with the German Secret Service. And instead of saying, Yes, I am guilty, I almost mechanically answered, No, such a reversion was a rare episode in the show trials of the late 1930s. Krestinsky was sentenced to death and executed in March 1938 and he was partially exonerated during Nikita Khrushchevs partial destalinization and was cleared of all charges during perestroika

2.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain

3.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי‎ ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו‎, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס‎, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד‎ Yid, ייִדן‎, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group

4.
Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev
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Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev was a Soviet Communist politician who rose to power during the rule of Joseph Stalin, joining the Politburo as a candidate member in 1926 and as a full member in 1932. Andreyev also headed the powerful Control Commission of the Soviet Communist Party in 1930 and 1931 then again continuously from 1939 until 1952. After the death of Stalin Andreyev was removed from the Politburo, andrey Andreyevich Andreyev was the son of a peasant peasant family. Andreyev left the village to work as a worker, assuming a position in a munitions factory during World War I. Andreyev was married to Dora Khazan, who was a student along with Stalins second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, together the couple had two children, a son named Vladimir and a daughter named Olga. Andreyev joined the Bolshevik Party in 1914 and he was a member of the Politburo from 1932 until 1952. Andreyev was a Chairman of the Soviet of the Union from 1938 until 1946 and directed the partys powerful Control Commission during 1930-1931, in 1949 he was briefly Peoples Commissar for Agriculture. This was also the year of the Leningrad case for which Andreyev built up a case against Nikolai Voznesensky, Andreyev was dismissed from Politburo in 1952, although he remained a vice-premier of the Soviet government. Andreyev fell from grace in 1953 following the Central Committee Plenary Meeting (convened immediately after Lavrentiy Berias dismissal, after 1953 Andreyev was made a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a largely ceremonial position. Andrey Andreyev died 5 December 1971, Andreyev is remembered for having loved the music of Tchaikovsky, mountaineering, and nature photography. During his life Andreyev was four times awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution and he is the namesake of the AA-20 locomotive, which he is credited for sponsoring as the head of the Soviet railway system from 1931 to 1935

5.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees

6.
Nikolai Bukharin
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Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician and prolific author on revolutionary theory. As a young man, he spent six years in exile, working closely with fellow exiles Vladimir Lenin, by late 1924, this had positioned Bukharin favourably as Joseph Stalins chief ally, with Bukharin soon elaborating Stalins new theory and policy of Socialism in One Country. Together, Bukharin and Stalin ousted Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev from the party at the XVth Communist Party Congress in December 1927, from 1926 to 1929, Bukharin enjoyed great power as General Secretary of Cominterns executive committee. But Stalin’s decision to proceed with collectivisation drove the two men apart, and Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo in 1929. Arrested in February 1937, he was charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state and executed in March 1938, Nikolai Bukharin was born on September 27,1888 in Moscow. He was the son of two schoolteachers, Ivan Gavrilovich Bukharin and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharina. His childhood is recounted in his mostly autobiographic novel How It All Began. Bukharins political life began at the age of sixteen with his lifelong friend Ilya Ehrenburg when he participated in student activities at Moscow University related to the Russian Revolution of 1905 and he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, becoming a member of the Bolshevik faction. With Grigori Sokolnikov, he convened the 1907 national youth conference in Moscow, by age twenty, he was a member of the Moscow Committee of the party. The committee was heavily infiltrated by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, as one of its leaders, Bukharin quickly became a person of interest to them. They married soon after their exile, in 1911, during the exile, he continued his education and wrote several books that established him as a major Bolshevik theorist in his 20s. His work, Imperialism and World Economy influenced Lenin, who borrowed from it in his larger and better known work, Imperialism. Nevertheless, he and Lenin often had hot disputes on issues and Bukharins closeness with the European Left. Bukharin developed an interest in the works of Austrian Marxists and non-Marxist economic theorists, such as Aleksandr Bogdanov, also while in Vienna in 1913, he helped the Georgian Bolshevik Joseph Stalin write an article, Marxism and the National Question, at Lenins request. In October 1916, while based in New York City, he edited the newspaper Novy Mir with Leon Trotsky, when Trotsky arrived in New York in January 1917, Bukharin was the first to greet him. At the news of the Russian Revolution of February 1917, exiled revolutionaries from around the world began to back to the homeland. Trotsky left New York on March 27,1917, sailing for St. Petersburg, Bukharin left New York in early April and returned to Russia by way of Japan, arriving in Moscow in early May 1917. Politically, the Bolsheviks in Moscow remained a minority to the Mensheviks

7.
Pravda
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The newspaper began publication on 5 May 1912 in the Russian Empire, but was already extant abroad in January 1911. It emerged as a newspaper of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. The newspaper was an organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU between 1912 and 1991, in 1996 there was an internal dispute between the owners of Pravda International and some of the Pravda journalists which led to Pravda splitting into different entities. After a legal dispute between the parties, the Russian court of arbitration stipulated that both entities would be allowed to continue using the Pravda name. Though Pravda officially began publication on 5 May 1912, the anniversary of Karl Marxs birth, its origins back to 1903 when it was founded in Moscow by a wealthy railway engineer. Pravda had started publishing in the light of the Russian Revolution of 1905, during its earliest days, Pravda had no political orientation. Kozhevnikov started it as a journal of arts, literature and social life, Kozhevnikov was soon able to form up a team of young writers including A. A. Bogdanov, N. A Rozhkov, M. N Pokrovsky, I. I Skvortsov-Stepanov, P. P Rumyantsev, lunts, who were active contributors on social life section of Pravda. Later they became the board of the journal and in the near future also became the active members of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Because of certain quarrels between Kozhevnikov and the board, he had asked them to leave and the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP took over as Editorial Board. But the relationship between them and Kozhevnikov was also a bitter one, the Ukrainian political party Spilka, which was also a splinter group of the RSDLP, took over the journal as its organ. Leon Trotsky was invited to edit the paper in 1908 and the paper was moved to Vienna in 1909. By then, the board of Pravda consisted of hard-line Bolsheviks who sidelined the Spilka leadership soon after it shifted to Vienna. Trotsky had introduced a format to the newspaper and distanced itself from the intra-party struggles inside the RSDLP. During those days, Pravda gained an audience among Russian workers. By 1910 the Central Committee of the RSDLP suggested making Pravda its official organ, finally, at the sixth conference of the RSDLP held in Prague in January 1912, the Menshevik faction was expelled from the party. The party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin decided to make Pravda its official mouthpiece, the paper was shifted from Vienna to St. Petersburg and the first issue under Lenins leadership was published on 5 May 1912. It was the first time that Pravda was published as a political newspaper

8.
Felix Dzerzhinsky
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Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, nicknamed Iron Felix, was a Polish and Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet statesman. His party pseudonyms were Yatsek, Yakub, Pereplyotchik, Franek, Astronom, Yuzef and he was a member of several revolutionary committees such as the Polish Revkom as well as several Russian and Soviet official positions. Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet secret police forces, later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats, while being the chief of the Soviet secret police. The Cheka soon became notorious for mass executions, performed especially during the Red Terror. Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on 11 September 1877 at the Dzerzhinovo family estate, about 15 km away from a town of Ivyanets, in the Minsk Region. His aristocratic family belonged to the former Polish szlachta, of the Sulima coat of arms, as a child, before taking to Marxist ideology, Felix considered becoming a Jesuit priest. His sister Wanda died at the age of 12, when she was shot with a hunting rifle on the family estate by one of the brothers. At the time of the incident, there were conflicting claims as to whether Felix or his brother Stanisław was responsible for the accident. In 1868, after a stint in Kherson gymnasium, he worked as a gymnasium teacher of physics and mathematics at the gymnasiums of Taganrog. In 1875 Edmund Dzierżyński retired due to conditions and moved with his family to his estate near Ivyanets and Rakaw. In 1882 Felixs father died from tuberculosis, as a youngster Dzerzhinsky became fluent in four languages, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, and Latin. He attended the Wilno gymnasium from 1887 to 1895, one of the older students at this gymnasium was his future arch-enemy, Józef Piłsudski. Years later, as Marshal of Poland, Piłsudski recalled that Dzerzhinsky, distinguished himself as a student with delicacy and modesty. He was rather tall, thin and demure, making the impression of an ascetic with the face of an icon, tormented or not, this is an issue history will clarify, in any case this person did not know how to lie. School documents show that Dzerzhinsky attended his first year in school twice, two months before graduating, Dzerzhinsky was expelled from the gymnasium for revolutionary activity. He had joined a Marxist group, the Union of Workers, in late April 1896, he was one of 15 delegates at the first congress of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. In 1897, he attended the congress of the LSDP. On 18 March 1897, he was sent to Kaunas, to advantage of the arrest of the Polish Socialist Party branch

9.
Poles
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The Poles are a nation and West Slavic ethnic group native to Poland who share a common ancestry, culture, history and are native speakers of the Polish language. The population of Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,394,000 out of a population of 38,538,000. Polands population inhabits several historic regions, including Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia, Silesia, Pomerania, Kuyavia, Warmia, Masuria, a wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe, the Americas and in Australasia. Today the largest urban concentration of Poles is the Katowice urban agglomeration of 2.7 million inhabitants, Poland was also for centuries a refuge for many Jews from all over Europe, a large number emigrated in the twentieth century to Israel. Several prominent Israeli statesmen were born in Poland, including Israels founder David Ben-Gurion, former President of Israel Shimon Peres, the Slavic people have been in the territory of modern Poland for over 1500 years. In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula, the last tribal undertaking resulted in the 10th century in a lasting political structure and state, Poland, one of the West Slavic nations. After 1945 the so-called autochthonous or aboriginal school of Polish prehistory received official backing in Poland, Polish people are the sixth largest national group in the European Union. Estimates vary depending on source, though available data suggest a number of around 60 million people worldwide. There are almost 38 million Poles in Poland alone, there are also Polish minorities in the surrounding countries including Germany, and indigenous minorities in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. There are some smaller indigenous minorities in nearby countries such as Moldova, the term Polonia is usually used in Poland to refer to people of Polish origin who live outside Polish borders, officially estimated at around 10 to 20 million. There is a notable Polish diaspora in the United States, Brazil, France has a historic relationship with Poland and has a relatively large Polish-descendant population. Poles have lived in France since the 18th century, in the early 20th century, over a million Polish people settled in France, mostly during world wars, among them Polish émigrés fleeing either Nazi occupation or later Soviet rule. In the United States, a significant number of Polish immigrants settled in Chicago, Ohio, Detroit, New York City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, the highest concentration of Polish Americans in a single New England municipality is in New Britain, Connecticut. The majority of Polish Canadians have arrived in Canada since World War II, the number of Polish immigrants increased between 1945 and 1970, and again after the end of Communism in Poland in 1989. In Brazil the majority of Polish immigrants settled in Paraná State, smaller, but significant numbers settled in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo and São Paulo. The city of Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora in the world and Polish music, dishes and it is estimated that over half a million Polish people have come to work in the United Kingdom from Poland. Since 2011, Poles have been able to work throughout the EU and not just in the United Kingdom, Ireland. The Polish community in Norway has increased substantially and has grown to a number of 120,000

10.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700

11.
Cheka
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Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20,1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, in 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic numbered at least 200,000. The name of the agency was originally The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, in 1918 its name was changed, becoming All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption. A member of Cheka was called a chekist, also, the term chekist often referred to Soviet secret police throughout the Soviet period, despite official name changes over time. In The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn recalls that zeks in the camps used old Chekist as a mark of special esteem for particularly experienced camp administrators. The term is found in use in Russia today. The Chekists commonly dressed in leather, including long flowing coats. Western communists adopted this clothing fashion, the Chekists also often carried with them Greek-style worry beads made of amber, which had become fashionable among high officials during the time of the cleansing. In the first month and half after the October Revolution, the duty of extinguishing the resistance of exploiters was assigned to the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and it represented a temporary body working under directives of the Council of Peoples Commissars and Central Committee of RDSRP. The VRK created new bodies of government, organized food delivery to cities and the Army, requisitioned products from bourgeoisie, one of its most important functions was the security of revolutionary order, and the fight against counterrevolutionary activity. On December 1,1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee reviewed a proposed reorganization of the VRK, on December 5, the Petrograd VRK published an announcement of dissolution and transferred the functions to the department of TsIK to the fight against counterrevolutionaries. On December 6, the Council of Peoples Commissars strategized how to persuade government workers to strike across Russia and they decided that a special commission was needed to implement the most energetically revolutionary measures. Peters, K. A. Peterson, V. A. Trifonov, on December 7,1917, all invited except Zhydelev and Vasilevsky gathered in the Smolny Institute to discuss the competence and structure of the commission to combat counterrevolution and sabotage. The commission should conduct a preliminary investigation. The commission should also observe the press and counterrevolutionary parties, sabotaging officials and it was decided to create three sections, informational, organizational, and a unit to combat counter-revolution and sabotage. Upon the end of the meeting, Dzerzhinsky reported to the Sovnarkom with the requested information, the commission was allowed to apply such measures of repression as confiscation, deprivation of ration cards, publication of lists of enemies of the people etc. That day, Sovnarkom officially confirmed the creation of VCheKa, the commission was created not under the VTsIK as was previously anticipated, but rather under the Council of the Peoples Commissars

12.
Mikhail Kalinin
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Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, known familiarly by Soviet citizens as Kalinych, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist functionary. He served as head of state of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, from 1926, he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Kalinin was born to a peasant family of ethnic Russian origin in the village of Verkhnyaya Troitsa, Tver Governorate and he was the elder brother of Fedor Kalinin. Kalinin finished his education at a school in 1889 and worked for a time on a farm. He moved to Saint Petersburg, where he found employment as a worker in 1895. He also worked as a butler and then as a worker at Tbilisi depot, where he met Sergei Alliluyev. In 1906, he married the ethnic Estonian Ekaterina Lorberg (Russian, Kalinin joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, the year of its foundation. He came to know Stalin through the Alliluyev family, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kalinin worked for the Bolshevik party and on the staff of the Central Union of Metal Workers. He later became active on behalf of the RSDLP in Tiflis, Georgia, Reval, Estonia, in April 1906 he served as a delegate at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Kalinin was an early and devoted adherent of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP and he was a delegate to the 1912 Bolshevik Party Conference held in Prague, where he was elected an alternate member of the governing Central Committee and sent to work inside Russia. He did not become a member because he was suspected of being an Okhrana agent. Kalinin was arrested for his activities in 1916 and freed during the February Revolution of 1917. Kalinin joined the Petrograd Bolshevik committee and assisted in the organization of the party daily Pravda and he continued to oppose an armed uprising to overthrow the government of Alexander Kerensky throughout that summer. In the elections held for the Petrograd City Duma in autumn 1917, Kalinin was chosen as mayor of the city, in 1919, Kalinin was elected a member of the governing Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party as well as a candidate member of the Politburo. He was promoted to membership on the Politburo in January 1926. When Yakov Sverdlov died in March 1919 Kalinin replaced him as President of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the name of this position was changed to Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in 1922 and to Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1938. Kalinin continued to hold the post without interruption until his retirement at the end of World War II, in 1920, Kalinin attended the Second World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow as part of the Russian delegation. He was seated on the rostrum and took an active part in the debates

13.
All-Russian Central Executive Committee
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The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until 1937. Although the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had supreme authority, in periods between its sessions its powers were passed to VTsIK, by the Russian Constitution VTsIK was obligated to convene the All-Russian Congress of Soviets not fewer than two times a year. Extraordinary Congresses could be called whether from the initiative of VTsIK or on the request of local Soviets, the VTsIK was elected by the full Congress, with no more than 200 individuals. It was completely responsible to the Congress, the functions of the Collegiate or the Presidium were not declared in the Constitution but presumably they were supposed to be purely supervisory or revisionary bodies. VTsIK gave a direction for the policies of the Workers-Peasant government. VTsIK convoked the All-Russian Congress of Soviets to which it presented the reports on its activity, general policy, members of VTsIK worked in the departments or executed special assignments of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Equally with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets VTsIK defined the State budget as well as budgets in different regions, All-Russian Central Executive Committee was first elected at the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, June 3–24,1917. The first Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets was not a governing body and this changed at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets during the October Revolution. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in, and elected the second Central Executive Committee and this then became the executive body of the RSFSR. It was composed of 62 Bolsheviks 29 Social Revolutionaries 10 Mensheviks The first chairman of the CEC was Lev Kamenev and he only cast a vote if there was an even split in the committee. The full name at a one time was All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Workers, Peasants, Red Army, from the formation of the Soviet Union, it downgraded from first level to second level of governing body. Following the adoption of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, this organ was replaced with the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, Lev Kamenev Yakov Sverdlov Mikhail Vladimirsky Mikhail Kalinin On December 30,1922 the Soviet Union was formed. It comprised the Russian SFSR and other communist-controlled Soviet republics, both positions were mostly ceremonial, increasingly so in later years. Supreme Soviet Text of the Russian Constitution of 1918

14.
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
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The All-Russian Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until 1936, effectively. The October Revolution ousted the government, making the Congress of Soviets the sole. It is important to note that this Congress was not the same as the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union which governed the whole Soviet Union after its creation in 1922, for the earlier portion of its life, the Congress was a democratic body. Over Russia there were hundreds of soviets, democratic local governing bodies in which the population could participate. The soviets elected the delegates to the Congress, and then in turn the Congress held the national authority, there were several political parties represented in the various sessions of the Congress, each of which fought for increasing their own influence in the soviets. The Congress was formed of representatives of city councils and the congresses of the provincial, on the other issues, the Congress and the Central Executive Committee had the same authority. The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was convened by the National Conference of the Soviets and it was dominated by pro-government parties and confirmed the supremacy of the Russian Provisional Government. There were 1090 delegates,822 with a right to vote, representing 305 workers, soldiers and peasant soviets, the breakdown of delegates by party was thus,285 Socialist-Revolutionaries,248 Mensheviks,105 Bolsheviks,32 Menshevik Internationalists, and others. The right to vote was given to these soviets containing at least 25,000 persons, on the first day of the Congress, the Socialist Revolutionaries split into two groups - the Left Social Revolutionaries and the Right Social Revolutionaries. Also on the first day, the Menshevik delegation and Right Socialist Revolutionary deputies walked out in protest,505 delegates voted in favour of the transfer of power to the Soviets. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Council of Peoples Commissars was elected by the Congress, naming Lenin the Chairman, uttering what are sometimes called the Land Decree and Decree on Peace. The Bolsheviks comprised 441 of the 707 delegates, on the fourth day January 13, more delegates who had been at the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants Deputies arrived. By the end there were 1,587 delegates, the Congress had a Praesidium composed of ten Bolsheviks and three Left Socialist-Revolutionaries with a further delegate from each other group. The Swiss, Rumanian, Swedish and Norwegian Social-Democratic parties, the British Socialist Party, the Congress received, Yakov Sverdlovs report on the activity of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Vladimir Lenins report on the activity of the Council of Peoples Commissars, joseph Stalins report from the Peoples Commissariat of Nationalities on the principles of federation and the nationalities policy for the emerging Soviet state. The Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Menshevik internationalists used the Congress to indicate their opposition to the domestic, the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People was passed and this went on to become the basis of the Soviet Constitution. It was also agreed to establish the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the basis of a union of the peoples of Russia. The Congress also approved the Decree on Land which provided the provisions of the redistribution and nationalization of land

15.
Lev Kamenev
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Lev Borisovich Kamenev, born Rozenfeld, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev was the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky. He served briefly as the equivalent of the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, Joseph Stalin viewed him as a source of discontent and a source of opposition to his own leadership. After Kamenev fell out of favour, Stalin had him executed on 25 August 1936, aged 53, Lev Borisovich Rozenfeld was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker and a Russian Orthodox mother. His father used the wealth he earned in the building of the Baku-Batumi railway to pay for an education for Lev. He went to the boys Gymnasium in Tiflis, Georgia and attended Moscow University, Rozenfeld became politically active during university and was arrested in 1902, ending his formal education. From that point on, he worked as a professional revolutionary and he adopted Kamenev as his revolutionary surname. In the early 1900s, he married Olga Bronstein, a fellow Marxist, the couple had two sons together. Kamenev joined the Communists in 1901 and he took a brief trip abroad in 1902, meeting Russian social democratic leaders living in exile, including Vladimir Lenin, whose adherent and close associate he became. He also visited Paris and met the Iskra group who published the newspaper. He went back to London to attend the 5th RSDLP Party Congress, where he was elected to the partys Central Committee and the Bolshevik Center, in May 1907, but was arrested upon his return to Russia. After Kamenev was released from prison in 1908, he and his family went abroad later in the year to help Lenin edit the Bolshevik magazine Proletariy. After Lenins split with another senior Bolshevik leader, Alexander Bogdanov, in mid-1908, Kamenev and they helped him expel Bogdanov and his Otzovist followers from the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP in mid-1909. In January 1910 Leninists, followers of Bogdanov, and various Menshevik factions held a meeting of the partys Central Committee in Paris, Kamenev and Zinoviev were dubious about the idea, but were willing to give it a try under pressure from conciliator Bolsheviks like Victor Nogin. Lenin was adamantly opposed to re-unification, but was outvoted within the Bolshevik leadership, the meeting reached a tentative agreement. As one of its provisions, Trotskys Vienna-based Pravda was designated as a central organ. Kamenev, Trotskys brother-in-law, was added to Pravdas editorial board as a representative of the Bolsheviks in this process, the unification attempts failed in August 1910, when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations. After the failure of the attempt, Kamenev continued working for Proletariy

16.
Ministry of Finance (Russia)
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Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation is a federal ministry, responsible for general financial policy and for general management in the field of finance of the Russian Federation. The ministry has two predecessors, the most notable one being the Ministry of Finance of the USSR who is itself the successor of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire, the agency has its headquarters in Ilinka Street 9. in Moscow. Anton Siluanov serve as current Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation since September 2011, manifesto of the Emperor Alexander I On approval of the Ministries was founded several ministries, including Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire. In the Soviet Union, the Ministry was renamed as the Ministry of Finance, from December 25,1991 to February 19,1992 the Ministry was called Ministry of Economy and Finance. By Presidential Decree of February 19,1992 №156, it was divided into two ministries - the Ministry of the Economy and Finance Ministry. Because of the 2014 Crimean crisis, a number of Western countries aimed sanctions at Russia, among these sanctioned individuals were Arkady Rotenberg and Boris Rotenberg, who also happened to be shareholders of certain Russian banks. On 24 March, MasterCard and Visa declined to permit transactions at these banks for a number of hours, Siluanov said that The payments restriction by Visa and Mastercard at one bank made us start thinking very seriously how we can secure ourselves against this kind of cases. President Vladimir Putin agreed the day in conference with legislators. We need to defend our interests and it is really too bad that certain companies have decided on restrictions. I think this will cause them to lose certain segments of the market - a very profitable market. Nihon Sōgō Kenkyūjo, The Russian economy, from stability to growth, Финансы России XIX столетия Вестник Финансов, Промышленности и Торговли. Высшие и центральные государственные учреждения России, 1801—1917 гг, Министерство финансов //Экономическая история России с древнейших времен до1917 г. Министерство финансов Российской империи в1858 -1903 гг, Диссертация на соискание ученой степени кандидата исторических наук. Министерство финансов Российской империи в начале царствования Александра II //Вестник Московского государственного областного университета, Бюрократический аппарат Министерства финансов в пореформенную эпоху //Вопросы истории. История финансовых учреждений со времени основания государства до кончины императрицы Екатерины II Д, Шилов, Государственные деятели Российской империи 1802—1917. Высшие органы власти и управления и их руководители, Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation

17.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino

18.
Prime Minister of Russia
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The official residence of the prime minister is Gorki-9 in Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast, but his working residence is in Moscow. Under Article 24 of the Federal Constitutional Law On the Government of the Russian Federation, the Russian Prime Minister is considered the second highest position in the government, after the President. Due to the role of the President of Russia in the political system. The use of the term Prime Minister is strictly informal and is never used by the Russian Constitution, Federal Laws, the current prime minister is Dmitry Medvedev of United Russia, who was appointed on May 8,2012. Since the office evolved rather than being created, it may not be totally clear-cut who was the first Prime Minister. However, these bodies had been only Advisory functions, and had no independence, the office of Chairman of those bodies were more decorative and do not bear any responsibility, besides, simultaneously the position of Chairman could hold several people. For example, from 1726 to 1727, the government headed by six people simultaneously, Alexander Menshikov, Fyodor Apraksin, Gavriil Golovkin, Andrey Osterman, Dmitry Golitsyn and Pyotr Tolstoy. From 1905 to 1917, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the modern post of Prime Minister appeared in 1905, after the transformation of the Committee of Ministers to the Council of Ministers. 6 November 1905, Sergei Witte was appointed the first Prime Minister of Russia, the position of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, lasted 12 years, during this time,7 people took this post. The position was abolished after the Russian revolution, the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, during the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, the official title of the prime minister was Minister-Chairman of the Russian Provisional Government. This position was held by two people, Georgy Lvov and Alexander Kerensky. The position lasted about six months, and after the October Revolution, was replaced by Chairman of the Council of peoples Commissars of the Russian SFSR. In the era of the Soviet Union, the head of government was the Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars, people who held those positions are sometimes referred to as the prime ministers. They may have also referred to as Premier of Ministers. Currently, the title is the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation. After the election of Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, the head of the government was personally Yeltsin and he headed the Russian SFSR Council of Ministers about six months. In fact, Yeltsin was the first Head of Government of Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, after Yeltsin, Acting Prime Minister became Yegor Gaidar, but the Russian Supreme Soviet refused to approve him as Prime Minister. 14 December 1992, the Prime Minister was appointed Viktor Chernomyrdin, in general, the Prime Minister serves more of an administrative role, nominating members of the Cabinet and implementing domestic policy

19.
Government of Russia
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The Government of the Russian Federation exercises executive power in the Russian Federation, also known as the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. The members of the government are the Prime Minister, the deputy ministers. It has its basis in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. According to the 1991 amendment to the 1978 Russian Constitution, the President of Russia was the head of the executive branch, according to the current 1993 Constitution of Russia, the President is not a part of the Government of Russia, which exercises executive power. But, the President does appoint the Prime Minister, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Council of Ministers had become the main executive body. At some points it contained over 69 state committees, 16–17 ministers,5 federal services, after the 2004 reform, government duties were split between 17 ministries,5 federal services, and over 30 governmental agencies. The Russian Federation practices asymmetrical federalism and this means that not all regions are treated fairly and that some regions have been given more autonomy than others. There are 7 super regions with a governor that answers to the President. Those super regions include the South, Central, North-West, Far East, Siberia, Ural, Volga and they were established in May of 2000. The prime minister, currently Dmitry Medvedev, is appointed by the president and he or she succeeds to the presidency if the current president dies, is incapacitated, or resigns. Corruption is common and widespread in the government, according to 2016 results of Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International, Russia ranked 131th place out of 176 countries with score 29. Multiple anti-corruption campaigns have launched to try to curb corruption. One of the biggest stances taken against corruption is the formation of the Anti-Corruption Council in 2008, the large body was preceded by Government of the Soviet Union. Since the Russian Federation emerged in 1991 to 1992, the structure has undergone several major changes. In the initial years, an amount of government bodies, primarily the different ministries. On 28 November 1991, President of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin signed presidential decree No.242 On reorganization of the government bodies of the RSFSR, Yeltsin officially declared the end of the Soviet Union and became the President of the Russian Federation. Yeltsin was a reformer and promised Western-styled democracy, in 1993 the new Russian Constitution was adopted. The new Constitution gained legitimacy through its legislature, independent judiciary, the position of the president and the prime minister

20.
Council of Labor and Defense
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The Council, a commission of the Council of Peoples Commissars, included among its executive body such top-ranking Bolshevik leaders as V. I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin, who oversaw a burgeoning professional apparatus, following the end of the Civil War the council was renamed and its economic planning and regulatory roles expanded to encompass the entire country. The Russian Revolution of 1917 concluded in the fall with the October Revolution, lenins radical Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The revolutionary government faced the dual tasks of economic organization and the marshaling of material resources on behalf of its Red Army, Vesenkha was attached to the de facto cabinet of the RSFSR, the Council of Peoples Commissars, and formally answered to that body. As the Vesenkha bureaucracy developed, it began to generate specialized departments from itself, entities known as glavki, the personnel employed in these glavki were often the same individuals who served in a similar capacity under the old regime. Goods of all kinds vanished from the marketplace and rationing was extended, unable to receive fair value for their surplus grain from the state grain-purchasing monopoly, peasants withheld their production from the official market, causing a parallel black market to emerge. The states prodrazverstka, involving the use of force against the peasantry in order to requisition grain further deepened the crisis. This new centralized and coercive economy, brought about by economic collapse, in the absence of a viable market economy, the Soviet state needed a mechanism for the coordination of production and distribution to serve the direct needs of the military. On November 30,1918 the All-Russian Central Executive Committee created an entity designed for this purpose, initially called the Council of Workers. This bureau was presented with the task of gathering and disbursing resources needed for the war effort, the Council of Workers and Peasants Defense was originally conceived as an emergency body dedicated solely to the mobilization of Russias resources for the fighting of the civil war. The organization quickly emerged as what historian Alec Nove has called the effective economic cabinet of the nation, the council instead concentrated upon day-to-day exigencies related to the life or death military campaign. In many cases the two attempted to extend their own influence and agendas within the same industries. Vesenkha was reduced to one of central economic authorities. One beneficiary of the institutional atrophy experience by Vesenkha was the Council of Workers, with the civil war drawing to a successful finish, in March 1920 the council was given a new name — Sovet truda i oborony, the Council of Labor and Defense. The organization was recognized as being of higher priority than its bureaucratic rival Vesenkha in obtaining allocations of scarce resources. Rather than limiting itself to the production and allocation necessary for the Red Army in wartime. The new name and function of STO was ratified in December 1920 by the 8th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in this way for the first time the RSFSR had a general planning organ with clearly defined functions, historian E. H. Carr has observed. An effort was made in May 1922 to make STO the regulating agency for national trade when Sovnarkom created a new commission attached to STO with the power to issue economic decrees

21.
Yevgeni Preobrazhensky
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Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky was a Russian revolutionary and economist. Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky was born in Bolkhov, Oryol Governorate, Russia on 15 February 1886 and his father was the son of a Orthodox priest who taught for seven years in a zemstvo school before his ordination in 1883. Following his appointment as a parish priest in Bolkhov in the summer of 1883 and it was in that school that Yevgeni was first educated. In an autobiography written for the Great Russian Encyclopedia, he recalled both a religious and an intellectually oriented upbringing, as well as an early loathing of inequality and he was an early and active reader. After leaving his fathers school, Preobrazhensky spent two years attending the state-operated Bolkhov public school. He subsequently left the town to attend the classically oriented gymnasium in the capital of Oryol. Preobrazhenskys philosophical rebelliousness brought him conflict with his priestly father. The estrangement between father and son would last for decades, influenced by the Communist Manifesto and another work by Frederick Engels, Preobrazhensky cast his lot with the latter organisation, believing its approach to be scientifically based. Together with two friends, Preobrazhensky declared his allegiance to the RSDLP late in 1903 and was accepted into the illegal organisation two or three months later. During the summer prior to his eighth and final year at the Orël gymnasium, periodic meetings were held in the neighboring forest. In the middle of October 1905, Preobrazhensky traveled to Moscow with the approval of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, there he was promoted to the position of chief propagandist for the urban Presnensky raion, thereby entering national politics as a party activist. From autumn 1909 Preobrazhensky was a member of the Bolshevik Party bureau in Irkutsk, from March 1917 he was a delegate on the Chita Soviet. At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party, beginning near the end of July 1917, from January 1918, a candidate member of the Ural Provincial Committee of the Bolshevik Party. As President of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Committee from May 1918, in 1918, Preobrazhensky joined the Left Communists faction opposing the draconian peace with Germany established by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It was at time that Preobrazhensky became closely affiliated with Nikolai Bukharin. Preobrazhensky was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party at its 9th Congress. He was at the time elected to the RKPs three member secretariat. Through the 1920s he was a leading Soviet Economist, developing the plan for industrialisation of the country and he co-wrote the book The ABC of Communism with Nikolai Bukharin, who would strongly disagree with him on the industrialization issue

22.
Karl Radek
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Radek was born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary, as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Litvak family, his father, Bernhard, worked in the post office and died whilst Karl was young. He took the name Radek from a character, Andrzej Radek. In 1907, after his arrest in Poland and his escape from custody, Radek moved to Leipzig in Germany and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany, working on the Partys Leipziger Volkszeitung. He re-located to Bremen, where he worked for Bremer Bürgerzeitung, in 1911, in September 1910, Radek was accused by members of the Polish Socialist Party of stealing books, clothes and money from party comrades, as part of an anti-semitic campaign against the SDKPiL. On this occasion, he was defended by the SDKPiL leaders, Rosa Luxemburg. Wanting to make an example of Radek, Jogiches revived the charges of theft and he dissolved the commission in July 1912, after it had failed to come to any conclusion, and in August pushed a decision through the party court expelling Radek. In their written finding, they broke his alias, making it - he claimed - dangerous for him to stay in Russian occupied Poland. In 1912 August Thalheimer invited Radek to go to Goppingen to temporarily replace him in control of the local SPD party newspaper Freie Volkszeitung, Radek accused the local party leadership in Württemberg of assisting the revisionists to strangle the newspaper due to the papers hostility to them. He took part in the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915, siding with the left, in 1917 Radek was one of the passengers on the sealed train that carried Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries through Germany after the February Revolution in Russia. During the discussions around signing the treaty, Radek was one of the advocates of a revolutionary war, Radek was arrested after the Spartacist uprising on 12 February 1919 and held in Moabit prison until his release in January 1920. While he was in Moabit, the attitude of the German authorities towards the Bolsheviks changed, on his return to Russia Radek became the Secretary of the Comintern, taking the main responsibility for German issues. In mid-1923, Radek made his controversial speech Leo Schlageter, The Wanderer into the Void at a session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Although Radek was not at Chemnitz when the decision to cancel the uprising in November 1923 took place at the KPD Zentrale, he approved the decision. Radek was part of the Left Opposition from 1923, writing his famed article Leon Trotsky, later in the year at the Thirteenth Party Congress Radek was removed from the Central Committee. Radek was sacked from his post at Sun Yat-Sen University in May 1927, Radek was expelled from the Party in 1927 after helping to organise an independent demonstration on the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution with Grigory Zinoviev in Leningrad. In early 1928, when prominent oppositionists were deported to remote locations within the Soviet Union, Radek was sent to Tobolsk. In that speech, he denounced Marcel Proust and James Joyce and he was sentenced to 10 years of penal labor. He was reportedly killed in a camp in a fight with another inmate

23.
Lithuanians
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Lithuanians are a Baltic ethnic group, native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,561,300 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in such as the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of two surviving members of the Baltic language family. Most Lithuanians belong to the Roman Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Evangelical Lutherans. The territory of the Balts, including modern Lithuania, was inhabited by several Baltic tribal entities, as attested by ancient sources. The last Pagan peoples in Europe, they were converted to Christianity in 1387. The subsequent imperial Russian occupation accelerated this process, it pursued a policy of Russification and it was believed by some at the time that the nation as such, along with its language, would become extinct within a few generations. At the end of the 19th century a Lithuanian cultural and linguistic revival occurred, Lithuania declared independence after World War I, which helped its national consolidation. A standardised Lithuanian language was approved, however, the eastern parts of Lithuania, including the Vilnius Region, were annexed by Poland, while the Klaipėda Region was taken over by Nazi Germany in 1939. In 1940, Lithuania was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union, the Germans and their allies attacked the USSR in June 1941, and from 1941—1944, Lithuania was occupied by Germany. The Germans retreated in 1944, and Lithuania fell under Soviet rule once again, the long-standing communities of Lithuanians in the Kaliningrad Oblast were almost destroyed as a result. The Lithuanian nation as such remained primarily in Lithuania, few villages in northeastern Poland, southern Latvia, some indigenous Lithuanians still remain in Belarus and the Kaliningrad Oblast, but their number is small compared to what they used to be. Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, and was recognized by most countries in 1991 and it became a member of the European Union on May 1,2004. Among the Baltic states, Lithuania has the most homogeneous population, Poles are mostly concentrated in the Vilnius Region. Especially large Polish communities are located in the Vilnius District Municipality and this concentration allows Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, an ethnic minority-based political party, to exert political influence. Due to the excessive pro-Pole political agenda, the party is known to cause friction between Lithuanians and Poles, however, it has only held 1 or 2 seats in the parliament of Lithuania for the past decade. Thus, it is active in local politics by having a majority in a few minor municipality councils. Russians, even though they are almost as numerous as Poles, are more evenly scattered

24.
Executive Committee of the Communist International
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The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body. The ECCI was established by the Founding Congress of the Comintern in 1919 and was dissolved with the rest of the Comintern in May 1943, the Communist International was established at a gathering convened in Moscow at the behest of the Russian Communist Party. Similarly, Andreas Rudniansky, a prisoner of war stranded in Russia represented Hungary, while Christian Rakovsky. A commission chaired by Swiss radical Fritz Platten was appointed by this Founding Congress to construct an organizational apparatus for the new Third International. This commission recommended the establishment of two bodies, an Executive Committee, to handle matters of policy, and a 5-member Bureau. The governing Executive Committee was to be headquartered in Moscow and to include representatives from the organizations of the Communist International. The parties of Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Balkan Federation, Switzerland, all parties joining the Comintern before the convention of the 2nd World Congress were similarly to be allowed a representative on this body. Until the arrival of the elected delegates, representatives of the Russian Communist Party were to perform the functions of this Executive Committee of the Communist International. This organizational plan was approved unanimously by the Congress, without debate, selected as President of ECCI was Grigorii Zinoviev, an old associate of V. I. Lenin and top figure in the Russian Communist Party, karl Radek, then ensconced in a Berlin prison, was symbolically selected as Secretary of ECCI, although the actual functions fell to Angelica Balabanov, albeit only for a few weeks. Zinoviev also served as editor of the magazine of ECCI, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional. The early ECCI was, in short, to an extent an propaganda body. In the estimation of historian E. H, carr, the summer and fall of 1920 marked the high-water mark for the prestige of the Comintern and its hopes of promoting world revolution. There would be, however, other functions for the organization and this did not mean that ECCI, the Cominterns directing body, was staffed exclusively with Russians during the 1919-1920 period, however. In addition to representatives of the Russian Communist Party Angelica Balabanova, Ian Berzin, Nikolai Bukharin, vorovsky, Grigorii Zinoviev, and G. Klinger, a number of radicals from around the world had at various time taken part in ECCIs activities. Among this group were László Rudas of Hungary, Jacques Sadoul of France, John Reed of the Communist Labor Party of America, John Anderson of the Communist Party of America, S. J. Rutgers of the Netherlands, in addition to others from Korea, China, Norway, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Poland, over time this financial aid provided by the Comintern would help to bind the various national parties to the central body. Still, it would be facile to reduce loyalty to the Comintern and its body, ECCI

25.
Communist International
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The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The Comintern had seven World Congresses between 1919 and 1935 and it also had thirteen Enlarged Plenums of its governing Executive Committee, which had much the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. The Comintern was officially dissolved by Joseph Stalin in 1943, while the differences had been evident for decades, World War I proved the issue that finally divided the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers movement. The socialist movement had been historically antimilitarist and internationalist, and therefore opposed workers serving as fodder for the bourgeois governments at war. This especially since the Triple Alliance comprised two empires, while the Triple Entente gathered France and Britain into an alliance with Russia, karl Marxs The Communist Manifesto had stated that the working class has no country and exclaimed Proletarians of all countries, unite. Massive majorities voted in favor of resolutions for the Second International to call upon the working class to resist war if it were declared. Nevertheless, within hours of the declarations of war, almost all the socialist parties of the combatant states announced their support for the war, the only exceptions were the socialist parties of the Balkans. To Lenins surprise, even the Social Democratic Party of Germany voted in favor of war credits, Socialist parties in neutral countries mostly supported neutrality rather than total opposition to the war. The International divided into a left and a reformist right. Lenin condemned much of the center as social-pacifists for several reasons, Lenins term social-pacifist aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain, who opposed the war on grounds of pacifism, but did not actively resist it. Discredited by its passivity towards world events, the Second International dissolved in the middle of the war in 1916, the victory of the Russian Communist Party in the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 was felt throughout the world. An alternative path to power to parliamentary politics was demonstrated, with much of Europe on the verge of economic and political collapse in the aftermath of the carnage of the Great War, revolutionary sentiments were widespread. The Bolsheviks believed that required a new international to ferment revolution in Europe. The Comintern was founded at a Congress held in Moscow March 2–6,1919, there were 52 delegates present from 34 parties. They decided to form an Executive Committee with representatives of the most important sections, the Congress decided that the Executive Committee would elect a five-member bureau to run the daily affairs of the International. However, such a bureau was not formed and Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev was assisted by Angelica Balabanoff, acting as the secretary of the International, Victor L. Kibaltchitch and Vladmir Ossipovich Mazin. Lenin, Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai presented material, the main topic of discussion was the difference between bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The central policy of the Comintern under Lenins leadership was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution, in this period, the Comintern was promoted as the General Staff of the World Revolution

26.
Christian Rakovsky
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Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat, he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovskys political career took him throughout the Balkans and into France and Imperial Russia, for part of his life, subsequently, he was a founding member of the Comintern, served as head of government in the Ukrainian SSR, and took part in negotiations at the Genoa Conference. He was ultimately recalled from France in autumn 1927, after signing his name to a controversial Trotskyist platform which endorsed world revolution, credited with having developed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism as bureaucratic centrism, Rakovsky was subject to internal exile. Submitting to Stalins leadership in 1934 and being reinstated, he was nonetheless implicated in the Trial of the Twenty One, imprisoned. He was rehabilitated in 1988, during the Soviet Glasnost period, Rakovskys original Bulgarian name was Krastyo Georgiev Stanchev, which he himself changed to Krastyo Rakovski. The usual form his first name took in Romanian was Cristian, while his last name was spelled Racovski, Racovschi and his given name was occasionally rendered as Ristache, an antiquated hypocoristic—he was known as such to his acquaintance, the writer Ion Luca Caragiale. In Russian, his name, including patronymic, was Khristian Georgievich Rakovsky. Christian is a rendition of Krastyo, as used by Rakovsky himself. In Ukrainian, Rakovskys name is rendered as Християн Георгійович Раковський, during his lifetime, he was also known under the pseudonyms H. Insarov and Grigoriev, which he used in signing several articles for the Russian-language press. Christian Rakovsky was born to a wealthy Bulgarian family in Gradets—near Kotel—at the time part of Ottoman-ruled Rumelia. Rakovskys father was a merchant who belonged to the Democratic Party, although his parents moved to the Kingdom of Romania in 1880, settling in Gherengic, he completed his education in newly emancipated Bulgaria. Rakovsky was expelled from the gymnasium in Gabrovo for his political activities and it was around that time that he became a Marxist, and began collaborating with the socialist journalist Evtim Dabev, whom he aided in printing works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. While in Switzerland, he joined the Socialist Student Circle at the University of Geneva, a polyglot, Rakovsky became close to Georgy Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, and his circle, eventually writing a number of articles and a book in Russian. He also briefly worked with Rosa Luxemburg, Pavel Axelrod and Vera Zasulich, unable to attend the First International Congress of Socialist Students in Brussels, he became involved in organizing the Second Congress, held in Geneva during the fall of 1893. He was an editor of the Geneva-based Bulgarian-language magazine Sotsial-Demokrat and later a major contributor to the Bulgarian Marxist publications Den, Rabotnik. He soon became involved in distributing socialist propaganda inside Bulgaria, at a time when Stefan Stambolov organized a crackdown on political opposition, later in 1893, Rakovsky enrolled in a medical school in Berlin, contributing articles for Vorwärts and becoming close to Wilhelm Liebknecht. As a Bulgarian delegate to the Second International Congress in Zürich, he met with Engels. Six months later, he was arrested and expelled from the German Empire for maintaining contacts with the Russian revolutionaries there

27.
Bulgarians
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Bulgarians are a South Slavic ethnic group who are native to Bulgaria and its neighboring regions. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization, the population of Bulgaria descend from peoples with different origins and numbers. They became assimilated by the Slavic settlers in the First Bulgarian Empire, from the indigenous Thracian people certain cultural and ethnic elements were taken. Other pre-Slavic Indo-European peoples, including Dacians, Celts, Goths, Romans, Greeks, the Thracian language has been described as a southern Baltic language. Some pre-Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have preserved in modern Bulgarians. Medieval historians claimed that the Triballi are the largest tribe and that subsequently changed their name to Bulgarians or Serbs. Others claimed that the Paeonians are Bulgarians, others claimed that the Moesi, according to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule, the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities. The latter gradually inflicting total linguistic replacement of Thracian if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized and they continued coming to the Balkans in many waves, but also leaving, most notably Justinian II settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor. The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups, the Sklavenoi and Antes, some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians. The control of the Bulgars in the west was indirect and in the hands of the Slavic chiefs, the Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe. However, any connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and contorted etymologies. The Bulgars are not thought to have numerous, becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled. Their archeological evidence is concentrated in northeast Bulgaria and in Macedonia, mixed Bulgar-Slavic settlements emerged according to archeological evidence. Omurtag was the last ruler with a Turkic name and during the reign of Boris the Slavonic language reached an official level, a substantional number of loan words of the Bulgar language remained in the Medieval Bulgarian Slavic language and fewer survived in the modern. During the Early Byzantine Era, the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic, the major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook. The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav, Bulgar, in different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo-European and Turkic people, who settled or lived on the Balkans. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681, after the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century

28.
Latvians
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Latvians are a Baltic ethnic group, native to what is modern-day Latvia and the immediate geographical region. They are occasionally referred to as Letts, although this term is obsolescent. The Latvian people share a common Latvian language, the Germanic settlers referred to the natives as Letts and the nation to Lettland, naming their colony Livonia or Livland. The Latin form, Livonia, gradually referred to the territory of the modern-day Latvia as well as southern Estonia. Latvians and Lithuanians are the surviving members of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family. Paternal haplogroups N1c-Tat and R1a are the two most frequent, reaching 39. 9% each among ethnic Latvians, balts, however, differ from Finno-Ugrics by the predominance of the N1c-L550 branch of N1c-Tat. Haplogroup R1a is associated with the spread of Indo-European languages, a recent autosomal study has shown that among other European populations, Latvians are genetically related to Lithuanians, followed distantly by Estonians. Latvians share a language and have a unique culture with traditions, holidays, customs. The culture and religious traditions have been influenced by Germanic, Scandinavian. Latvians have an ancient culture that has been dated back to 3,000 B. C. Latvians maintained a connection and trade with their neighbors, and near ethnic cousins the Finno-Ugrians, otherwise known contemporarily as Estonians. Colonizers from the south arrived quickly, driving many of the hunters northward as polar ice caps melted further, or east, into modern-day Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The Roman author Tacitus remarked upon the Aestii peoples, thought to be inhabitants of the modern Baltic lands, suggesting that they were abound with formidable, yet peaceful and hospitable people. The Latvian peoples remained relatively undisturbed until Papal intervention via the Germanic, Teutonic Order colonized Kurzeme, Papal decrees ordered the Teutonic Order to spread the Word of the Lord and the Gospel of Christianity throughout uncivilized, Pagan lands. Though these attempts to Christianize the population failed, and the Teutonic Order eventually redeployed southward, south-Eastern Latvia, due to having a relatively large ethnic Russian population, has maintained a large Russian influence. The national language of the Latvian people is Latvian, Latvian is part of a unique linguistic branch of Indo-European languages, the Baltic languages. List of Latvians Demographics of Latvia Latvian American Latvian Australian Latvian Brazilian Latvian Canadian Baltic people in the United Kingdom

29.
Alexei Rykov
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Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, and after it split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903 and he played an active part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. During the Russian Civil War, Rykov oversaw the implementation of the War Communism economic policy, after Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov—along with Lev Kamenev—was elected by the Sovnarkom to serve as Deputy Chairman to Lenin. While both Rykov and Kamenev were Lenins deputies, Kamenev was the acting Premier of the Soviet Union, on 21 December 1930 he was removed from the Politburo. From 1931-37 Rykov served as Peoples Commissar of Communications on the Council he formerly chaired, on 17 February 1937—at a meeting of the Central Committee—he was arrested with Nikolai Bukharin. In March 1938 both were found guilty of treason and executed, Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in Saratov, Russia. His parents were peasants from the village of Kukarka, alexeis father, Ivan Illych Rykov, a farmer whose work had led the family to settle in Saratov died in 1889 from cholera while working in Merv. His widowed stepmother could not care for him, so he was cared for by his sister, Klavdiya Ivanovna Rykova. In 1892 he began his first year of school in Saratov. An outstanding student, he started school at age 13. He excelled in mathematics, physics and the natural sciences, at 15 Rykov stopped attending church and confession, and renounced his faith. He graduated from school in 1900 and enrolled at the University of Kazan to study law. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898 and supported its Bolshevik faction when the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at its Second Congress in 1903. He worked as a Bolshevik agent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and he was elected a member of the Partys Central Committee at its 3rd Congress in London in 1905 and its 4th Congress in Copenhagen in 1906. He was elected member of the Central Committee at the 5th Congress in London. He spent 1910-11 exiled in France, and in 1912 expressed reproach towards Lenins proposal that the Bolsheviks become an independent party, the dispute was interrupted by Rykovs exile to Siberia for revolutionary activity. Rykov returned from Siberia after the February Revolution of 1917 and re-joined the Bolsheviks and he became a member of the Petrograd Soviet and the Moscow Soviet. At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in July–August 1917 he was elected to the Central Committee, during the October Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Moscow

30.
Supreme Soviet of the National Economy
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Supreme Soviet of the National Economy, Superior Soviet of the Peoples Economy, Vesenkha was the superior state institution for management of the economy of the RSFSR and later of the Soviet Union. Its stated purpose was to plan for the organization of the life of the country. It was subordinated to the Sovnarkom and it had rights of confiscation and expropriation. The first Chairman was Osinsky and with Bukharin, Georgy Oppokov, Milyutin, Sokolnikov, after the creation of the Soviet Union in 1923 it was transformed into the joint all-Union and republican Peoples Commissariat. In 1932, it was reorganized into three Peoples Commissariats, of industry, light industry and forestry. In each of the republics of the Soviet Union, subordinate organisations existed. These were referred to as ВСНХ followed by their union republic acronym, the all-union council could be referred to as ВСНХ СССР. The republican VSNKhs had control over small scale, minor industries which used materials and supplied local markets. Large scale industrial enterprises were controlled by one of the industrial sector departments of the all-union VSNKh, within the VSNKh, departments were split into two types. Departments within the functional sector dealt with decisions relating to finance, planning, economic policy, departments of this type were created by decree in 1926 and consisted of chief departments, known as glavki. Heads of all the departments in this sector formed the council of the all-union VSNKh together with representatives from the union republics and it was subordinated to the Council of Ministers of the USSR and managed industry and construction. Sovnarkhozes were introduced by Nikita Khrushchev in July 1957 in an attempt to combat the centralization, the USSR was initially divided into 105 economic regions, with sovharknozes being operational and planning management. Simultaneously, a number of ministries were shut down. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Ordzhonikidzes Takeover of Vesenkha, A Case Study in Soviet Bureaucratic Politics, Soviet Studies, vol

31.
Leonid Serebryakov
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Leonid Petrovich Serebryakov was a Russian politician and Bolshevik victim of Joseph Stalins Great Purge. Born at Samara, Serebryakov was originally a metalworker, in 1905 he joined the Bolsheviks, for which he actively campaigned. After the Russian Revolution he climbed to the ranks in the Communist Party. In 1919 he became a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, together with Nikolai Krestinsky, the three secretaries supported Leon Trotsky when he had a dispute with Lenin over the trade unions. At the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, Lenins faction won a victory on this dispute, and Serebryakov. Afterwards he worked with Stalin on the Military Council of the Southern Front during the Russian Civil War, after Lenins death he joined the Left Opposition of Leon Trotsky. Eventually this led to his downfall, in 1936 he was arrested for alleged membership of a terrorist Trotskyite organization, while Serebryakov was under arrest, his prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky misappropriated his house and money. During the second Moscow Show Trial in January 1937, Serebryakov was sentenced to death after a confession by torture. He was married to the writer Galina Serebryakova, interview with Zorya Serebryakova, WSWS. org,27 February 2014

32.
Fyodor Sergeyev
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Fyodor Andreyevich Sergeyev, better known as Comrade Artyom, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, agitator, and journalist. He was a friend of Sergei Kirov and Joseph Stalin. Sergeyev was an ideologist of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, Sergeyev was born in the village of Glebovo, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire near the city of Fatezh to a family of a peasants. His father Andrey Arefyevich Sergeyev was a contractor to a construction porter, in 1901 Fyodor finished studies at the Yekaterinoslav realschule. He went on to attend the Imperial Moscow Technical College, from 1902 he was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, later remaining with the Bolshevik faction of the party. He was a prominent party agitator in Yekaterinoslav, Kursk, in 1905 Sergeyev participated in the armed uprising in Kharkiv. In 1906 for a time he headed the Perm party committee. In 1910 he escaped to Brisbane, Australia where he organized the Union of Russian Emigrants, in 1912 Sergeyev receiving a British citizenship was a chief-editor of Echo of Australia and was better known as Big Tom. He joined the Australian Socialist Party and was involved in trade-unionist opposition to the first world war, in 1917, after the February revolution, he returned to Russia, becoming a leader of the Bolshevik faction in the Kharkiv council. In October 1917 he was organizer of a military coup-detat in Kharkiv, at the 1st congress of Soviets in Ukraine he was elected to the Central Executive Committee of Ukraine and later appointed the Ukrainian Narkom of Trade and Industry. Sergeyev was a chairman of the Sovnarkom of the unrecognized Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic in Ukraine and his actions secured the nationalization of industrial centers concentrated in the eastern Ukraine. Sergeyev became one of the organizers of Ukrainian Central Military-Revolutionary Committee in resistance to Central powers, Fyodor Sergeyev died in 1921 during the test of the Aerowagon and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The city of Bakhmut, former center of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, was renamed in his honor as Artemivsk in 1924 and his infant son Artyom Fyodorovich was adopted by Joseph Stalin. Hence in February 2016 the city Artemivsk returned to its original name, in Thomas Keneallys novel The Peoples Train, the lead character, Artem — aka “Tom” — Samsurov, is loosely based on the life of Sergeyev

33.
Government of Ukraine
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The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, commonly referred to as the Government of Ukraine, is the highest body of state executive power in Ukraine. As Cabinet of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, it was formed on 18 April 1991 by the Law of Ukrainian SSR No. 980-XII, vitold Fokin was approved the first Prime Minister of Ukraine. The Cabinet is a body consisting of the Cabinets presidium composed of five individual and several ministries that are represented by their respective minister. Some ministries may be headed by members of the Cabinet presidium, the presidium of Cabinet is composed of the Prime Minister of Ukraine presiding over the Cabinet and assisted by his First Vice Prime and other Vice Prime ministers. The Secretariat of Cabinet of Ministers ensures the operations of the cabinet, the current Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine is since 14 April 2016 the Groysman government. The number of ministries in the cabinet has changed over time, some ministries were abolished, the Cabinet is responsible to the President of Ukraine and is under the control and being held accountable to the Verkhovna Rada. It consists of the Prime Minister, the First Vice-Prime Minister, at one point of time there also was an institute of state ministries that was majorly abolished on February 25,1992 by the Presidential Decree. The Secretariat of Cabinet of Ministers supports the operation of the government. Structural part of the secretariat is also the office of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, parts of Cabinet meetings are broadcast live on Ukrainian TV. Since August 2026 Ukrainians can sign and submit petitions to the Cabinet of ministers of Ukraine to the formation of the priorities of state policy. To be considered, the petition must get at least 25,000 votes three months from the date of publication, Ukraine The duties of the cabinet of ministers are described in the Article 116 of the Constitution of Ukraine. Members of the government are citizens of Ukraine, who have the right of vote, higher education, the members of the government cannot have judgement against them that has not been extinguished and taken away in the established legal order. At the sessions of the Cabinet may participate the President of Ukraine or his representative, authority The Cabinet issues resolutions and orders that are mandatory for execution. Normative legal acts of the Cabinet, ministries, and other bodies of executive power are subject to registration. Failure to register invalidates the act, the Cabinet also possesses the power of legislative initiative and may introduce its own bills to the parliament. The members of Cabinet and deputy ministers may be present at the sessions of the parliament, every year no later than September 15 the Cabinet submits a bill on the State Budget of Ukraine to the Verkhovna Rada. The sessions of the Cabinet are considered if more than a half of the Cabinets members participate in them. In case if a minister cannot participate at the sessions he or she may be replaced by a deputy with a consultative capacity, on propositions of other members of the Cabinet a consultative capacity may be awarded to other participants who allowed at the sessions of the Cabinet

34.
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the United Nations, although it was legally represented by the All-Union state in its affairs with countries outside of the Soviet Union. From the start, the city of Kharkiv served as the republics capital. However, in 1934, the seat of government was moved to the city of Kyiv. Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe to the north of the Black Sea, bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia, Byelorussia, the Ukrainian SSRs border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Unions western-most border point. According to the Soviet Census of 1989 the republic had a population of 51,706,746 inhabitants, the name Ukraine, derived from the Slavic word kraj, meaning land or border. It was first used to part of the territory of Kievan Rus in the 12th century. The name has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century, after the abdication of the tsar and the start of the process of the destruction of the Russian Empire many people in Ukraine wished to establish a Ukrainian Republic. During a period of war from 1917-23 many factions claiming themselves governments of the newly born republic were formed, each with supporters. The two most prominent of them were the government in Kyiv and the government in Kharkiv, the former being the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and the latter the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This government of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic was founded on 24–25 December 1917, in its publications it names itself either the Republic of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies or the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Soviets. The last session of the government took place in the city of Taganrog, in July 1918 the former members of the government formed the Communist Party of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in Moscow. On 10 March 1919, according to the 3rd Congress of Soviets in Ukraine the name of the state was changed to the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second, during its existence, the Ukrainian SSR was commonly referred to as Ukraine or the Ukraine. On 24 August 1991, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence, since the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine in June 1996, the country became known simply as Ukraine, which is the name used to this day. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, several factions sought to create an independent Ukrainian state, the most popular faction was initially the local Socialist Revolutionary Party that composed the local government together with Federalists and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks boycotted any government initiatives most of the time, instigating several armed riots in order to establish the Soviet power without any intent for consensus, immediately after the October Revolution in Petrograd, Bolsheviks instigated the Kiev Bolshevik Uprising to support the Revolution and secure Kyiv. Due to a lack of support from the local population and anti-revolutionary Central Rada, however. Most moved to Kharkiv and received the support of the eastern Ukrainian cities, later, this move was regarded as a mistake by some of the Peoples Commissars

35.
Ivan Smirnov (politician)
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Ivan Nikitich Smirnov was a Communist Party activist. He was born in January 1881 in Gorodishche, Moscow Governorate in a family of Russian ethnicity, in 1899, Smirnov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and became a Bolshevik. He led his party activity in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Vyshniy Volochok, Rostov, Kharkov, Smirnov was subject to repeated arrests. In 1916, he was called up for the service in a reserve regiment in Tomsk. In 1917, he became a member of the committee of the Tomsk Soviet. In August of the year, Smirnov was one of the organizers and upkeepers of the Bolshevist publishing house Volna in Moscow. He was a deputy of the Constituent Assembly, during the Russian Civil War, Smirnov was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, and the 5th Army. Smirnov played a role in defeating the army of Alexander Kolchak during the war. In 1920-1923, Smirnov was a member of the Executive Committee of the Russian Communist Party, at the same time, he chaired the Siberian Revolutionary Committee and was a member of the Siberian bureau of the Russian Communist Party. Smirnov is known to have had ties with the Cheka and administered massacres of the rebellious peasants in Tyumen. He was the one to organize the capture of General Roman Ungern, in 1921-1922, Smirnov was a secretary of the Petrograd Committee and Northwestern Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Russian Communist Party. He was the closest associate of Grigory Zinoviev, Smirnov took part in mass executions and deportations from Petersburg of representatives of the exploiter class. In April–September 1922 and May–July 1923, Smirnov was a member of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the National Economy of the RSFSR, in July 1923, Smirnov was appointed Peoples Commissar for Soviet Postal Services and Telegraph. In 1923, Smirnov became a member of the Trotskyist opposition. After Lenins death, Smirnov publicly insisted on deposition of Joseph Stalin from the post of the secretary general, on November 11,1927, Smirnov was removed from his Peoples Commissar post. A month later, he was expelled from the Communist Party by the decision of the 15th Congress, on December 31,1927, Smirnov was sentenced to three years of exile by the decision of the Special meeting of the OGPU Board. In October 1929, Smirnov broke with Trotskyism and was reinstalled in the Communist Party in May 1930, in 1929-1932, he headed the Saratovkombainstroy trust. In 1932, Smirnov was appointed head of the Department of Erection of New Buildings at the Peoples Commissariat for Heavy Industry of the USSR

36.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues

37.
Georgians
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The Georgians or Kartvelians are a nation and ethnic group who constitute a majority of the population in Georgia. Large Georgian communities are present throughout Russia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Ukraine, United States. Georgians arose from the ancient Colchian and Iberian civilizations, there are also small Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities in Tbilisi and Adjara, as well as a significant number of irreligious Georgians. By the early 11th century they formed a unified Kingdom of Georgia and inaugurated the Georgian Golden Age and this lasted until being weakened by Mongol invasions, as well as internal divisions following the death of George V the Brilliant, the last of the great kings of Georgia. To ensure Georgias survival, in 1783 Heraclius II of Georgia forged an alliance with the Russian Empire, the Russo-Georgian alliance, however, backfired as Russia was unwilling to fulfill the terms of the treaty, proceeding to annex the troubled kingdom in 1801. Georgians briefly reasserted their independence from Russia under the First Georgian Republic from 1918-1921, Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi, their land Sakartvelo, and their language Kartuli. According to The Georgian Chronicles, the ancestor of the Kartvelian people was Kartlos, however, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the latter being one of the proto-Georgian tribes that emerged as a dominant group in ancient times. Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians, the term Georgians is derived from the country of Georgia. Starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. Scholars usually refer to them as Proto-Kartvelian tribes, the Georgian people in antiquity have been known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Colchians and Iberians. East Georgian tribes of Tibarenians-Iberians formed their kingdom in 7th century BCE, however, western Georgian tribes established the first Georgian state of Colchis before the foundation of the Iberian Kingdom in the east. According to the scholars of Georgia, the formations of these two early Georgian kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia, resulted in the consolidation and uniformity of the Georgian nation. The ancient Jewish chronicle by Josephus mentions Georgians as Iberes who were also called Thobel, diauehi in Assyrian sources and Taochi in Greek lived in the northeastern part of Anatolia, a region that was part of Georgia. This ancient tribe is considered by scholars as ancestors of the Georgians. Modern Georgians still refer to this region, which now belongs to present-day Turkey, as Tao-Klarjeti, some people there still speak the Georgian language. Colchians in the ancient western Georgian Kingdom of Colchis were another proto-Georgian tribed and they are first mentioned in the Assyrian annals of Tiglath-Pileser I and in the annals of Urartian king Sarduri II, and are also included western Georgian tribe of the Meskhetians. Iberians, also known as Tiberians or Tiberanians, lived in the eastern Georgian Kingdom of Iberia, both Colchians and Iberians played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the modern Georgian nation

38.
Mikhail Tomsky
–
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader. He was the Soviet leader of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, Tomsky attempted to form a trade union at his factory in St. Petersburg resulting in his dismissal. His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become a socialist and join the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904, born in Kolpino, Saint Petersburg Governorate in a lower-middle-class family of Russian ethnicity, Tomsky moved to Estonia and was involved in the 1905 Revolution. He helped form the Revel Soviet of Workers Deputies and the Revel Union of Metal Workers, Tomsky was arrested and deported to Siberia. He escaped and returned to St. Petersburg where he became president of the Union of Engravers and Chromolithographers. Tomsky was arrested in 1908 and then exiled to France, but returned to Russia in 1909 where he was arrested for his political activities. He was freed by the Provisional Government after the February Revolution in 1917 and he was elected to the Central Committee in March 1919, to its Orgburo in 1921 and to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in April 1922. Tomsky was an ally of Nikolai Bukharin and Alexey Rykov, who led the wing of the Communist Party in the 1920s. Tomsky was put in charge of the Soviet chemical industry, a position which he occupied until 1930, Tomsky headed the State Publishing House from May 1932 until August 1936, when he was accused of terrorist connections during the First Moscow Trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev. Rather than face arrest by the NKVD, Tomsky committed suicide by gunshot in his dacha in Bolshevo and he was posthumously accused of high treason and other crimes during the third show trial of Bukharin, Rykov and others. The Soviet government cleared Tomsky of all charges during perestroika in 1988, Bolshevik Ideology and the Ethics of Soviet labor. Politicheckie deyateli Rossii 1917, Biograficheskij slovar, tucker, Memoir of a Stalin Biographer Works by or about Mikhail Tomsky at Internet Archive Tomsky Archive Marxists Internet Archive The trade unions, the party and the state a pamphlet by Tomsky

39.
Leon Trotsky
–
Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and he was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union from exile, on Stalins orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent. Trotskys ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union and his parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna. The family was of Jewish origin, the language they spoke at home was Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Trotskys younger sister, Olga, who grew up to be a Bolshevik. Many anti-Communists, anti-semites, and anti-Trotskyists have noted Trotskys original surname, some authors, notably Robert Service, have also claimed that Trotskys childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an apparent attempt to emphasize Trotskys Jewish origins but, contrary to Services claims and he says that it is highly improbable that the family was Jewish, as they did not speak Yiddish, the common language among eastern European Jews. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotskys childhood name was Lyova, when Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated in a Jewish school. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial governments policy of Russification. As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a cosmopolitan port city. This environment contributed to the development of the young mans international outlook, although Trotsky said in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently. Trotsky became involved in activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he initially opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism later that year by his future first wife, instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name Lvov, he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, in January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested

An advertisement for a hectograph. Preobrazhensky and other Russian revolutionaries frequently reproduced their underground proclamations and leaflets using this simple printing technique.

An advocate of rapid industrialization and believer that the Communist Party in danger of being overtaken by the numerically massive peasantry, Preobrazhensky was naturally attracted to Trotsky, who held similar views.